


tandem

by luminaryestuary



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Grieving, SPOILERS ABOUND, angst and sadness, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-11 11:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19536721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminaryestuary/pseuds/luminaryestuary
Summary: tan·dem - adv./adj.def.: alongside each other; togetherPost Season 3. Spoilers.





	tandem

After Hopper’s death, the nights are very long.

Long, dark, and quiet — full of unceasing and immeasurable sadness.

This new house isn’t her home.

The lighting is too dark in certain places, too bright in others.

The hallway is too short.

The nighttime shadows play across her bedroom ceiling in an entirely foreign pattern.

Even the sheets feel wrong, no matter how many times she washes them — at some point she’d washed them five times in one day, furiously wiping tears across the back of her hand and refusing to look at her blotchy reflection in the new bathroom mirror.

Her grief is strange and awful, but not unfamiliar.

In fact, at this point, she knows it too well.

It sits with her on those long nights, a subtle darkness that only she can perceive.

* * *

The first several nights in the new house are… trying.

It doesn’t surprise her that most of the lights are left on until morning.

It doesn’t surprise her that Jonathan keeps an ax next to his bed, in strikingly plain view of anyone who walks by.

It doesn’t surprise her that Will groans and thrashes in his sleep, audibly enough that she has to go in and gently shake him awake.

It doesn’t surprise her that the circles beneath her eyes are dark and purple, and that exhaustion seems to dig its sharp teeth into her, like some kind of whole-body leech.

What _does_ surprise Joyce happens two weeks later, when El softly treads into her bedroom.

She climbs into Joyce’s bed and under the covers without a word.

Neither of them say anything.

El simply snuggles into her side and sighs a few times, her breathing slowly evening out and deepening into slumber.

Eventually, Joyce closes her eyes.

It’s the first night that she’s able to sleep — for more than a few fitful hours, at least. 

* * *

As the summer months pass and the oppressive heat begins to wane, the world once again transforms itself into rich autumn colors and cooler temperatures.

Strangely, El still comes into her room every night.

It’s automatic, almost like a ritual of some sort.

Joyce doesn’t mind.

It’s been a long time since one of her own children has allowed her to be this close, allowed themselves to be this vulnerable.

Even if El isn’t strictly her child, she’s beginning to feel like a daughter in every way possible.

A daughter that Joyce never realized she needed.

* * *

One night in late October, she’s fast asleep and dreaming — a collection of nonsensical images and sounds — when there’s a flicker, an odd pause in the sleeping broadcast of her mind.

She’s back beneath the mall, grasping at the key with her fingertips.

The air smells crisp and sharp; chemical, metallic.

_Hopper?_

Joyce suddenly sees him, standing out on the platform.

He’s far away, so far away — nodding at her through the crackling arcs of electricity, the waves of plasma.

It takes her a moment, but she realizes that he looks all… wrong.

His hair is long and knotted, unkempt. He has a full beard that’s ratty and tangled, streaked with grey. His eyes are dull and unfocused, full of suppressed pain.

The lines in his face seem deeper, darker, harsher.

_Wait— this isn’t a memory, is it?_

Joyce blinks and the image of Hopper is gone.

The previous dreaming resumes, but it’s haphazard and blurry, as if the reels of a film projector have been knocked askew and out of sync.

 _Something’s not right,_ a voice whispers, but it’s not her voice.

Joyce startles herself awake, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

Even though she’s groggy and confused, she notices a strange pins and needles sensation that is slowly receding from her body.

At some point during the night, El had wrapped a hand tightly around her wrist. 

* * *

The flickers happen intermittently throughout November.

Joyce doesn’t understand why.

Each time a flicker interrupts her dreams, it lasts longer than the one before.

Each time, Hopper is nodding at her from the platform.

Each time, he looks more and more haggard, more and more distressed.

Each time, she awakes to pins and needles, with El’s hand gripping her arm like a vice.

* * *

On December 6th, the flicker is different.

Joyce drifts off to sleep with El tucked in beside her, and when she opens her eyes, she’s… elsewhere.

It’s not a dream, not her bed — but a place.

A place that’s free of blurriness and uncertainty; a place where she is fully cognizant and aware of herself.

Joyce realizes that she’s alone, surrounded by endless, endless black.

There is no horizon; there is no light.

She’s standing on what feels like water, the dark edges of it lapping at her toes and heels.

The only thing she can clearly see is her reflection beneath her, mirror-like on a pristine, glassy surface.

It’s the most bizarre thing.

Even her breathing reverberates here, the faintest sound bounding out and returning to her from the farthest reaches of nothingness.

She stands there for what feels like an eternity, just trying to make sense of this place, this… void.

A soft whisper of noise echoes from somewhere behind her, so she slowly turns around — her senses are suddenly on high alert, and her heart begins to race in her chest.

In the distance, someone is there.

It’s difficult to tell who it is, but their positioning reminds her of someone who’s hiding and afraid, like a child.

_Like Will._

Instinctively, she moves forward, her throat tight and her eyes beginning to sting. There’s a strange sinking feeling in her stomach, something she can’t identify amidst the rising prickliness of adrenaline that tingles along her spine.

She’s walking at first, and then she’s running — no, sprinting across the dark, dark water.

Her feet barely make a sound.

For some reason, she needs to go to this person, because she needs to see their face.

The edges of the figure blur and tremble as she approaches, as if the integrity of the world around her is losing focus.

She’s almost there when she recognizes who it is, but just barely.

_Hopper._

Joyce stops in front of him — in front of this man, this infuriating and amazing man — and just stares at him, her lungs stinging.

He’s curled up somewhere, sitting with his knees tucked into his chest. His clothes are nearly rags, thin and dirty and patched in places. His hair is mangy and matted, his skin clammy and grimy.

A feeling begins to creep into her subconscious — no, not a feeling, but _knowledge_.

Hopper isn’t a figment of her dreaming mind.

He never was.

All this time, he’d been real.

_He’s alive._

Somewhere, somehow he’s alive.

 _Hopper!_ She calls his name, her voice echoing, thrumming in the air and within her. _Hopper!_

Hopper doesn’t move, doesn’t stir.

_Please look at me! Please!_

He can’t hear her.

 _Oh God_ — he doesn’t know she’s here, doesn’t know that she’s watching.

He can’t see her.

 _Hopper, please_ — She reaches out to touch his shoulders, and for a blinding moment he’s warm and solid beneath her hands—

There’s an abrupt tugging sensation on her whole body, and Hopper evaporates, his form rapidly disintegrating into a fine mist before disappearing altogether.

She pitches forward and collapses to her knees, a sob wrenching free as her hands plunge through the air where he’d been, and then—

* * *

“Joyce.”

Joyce opens her eyes to the blank ceiling, grimacing against the familiar pins and needles sensation, which feels stronger and more powerful than ever before.

Beneath the covers, El’s hand is joined with hers, their fingers firmly intertwined.

“Joyce?”

She glances over.

El is awake, her dark eyes wide in the early morning light.

Joyce wants to say something, anything, but the words are stuck in her throat, and she can’t—

Wordlessly, El reaches across the space between them with her free hand, lightly brushing her fingers across Joyce’s upper lip.

Her fingertips come away red with blood.

They stare at each other for a few moments, letting reality settle itself into the cracks and crevices where grief had been wiped away.

“He’s alive,” Joyce whispers, her voice weak and raspy.

“I know,” El whispers back, and she smiles. “You helped me see.”

**Author's Note:**

> i. I fully believe Hopper is alive.  
> ii. I also fully believe that Joyce will help El heal and vice versa.


End file.
